WeLion New Energy opened a Pre-IPO round targeting 2 billion yuan in August 2026, with a pre-money valuation of about 20 billion yuan, and QingTao Energy filed for a Hong Kong listing in April. The two are among at least three solid-state battery makers now vying to be the first listed company in the sector, following Factorial Energy's Nasdaq debut in June.
WeLion, spun off from the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, completed the second phase of IPO coaching and aims for a ChiNext listing in 2027 through CITIC Construction Investment. QingTao's prospectus puts it at roughly 27.9 billion yuan after its Series H round, and it claims top position in hybrid solid-liquid and all-solid-state shipments in China for 2025.
capital is flowing into a battery technology that has not yet reached mass production, and the gap between the money and the manufacturing is widening. QingTao's gross margin fell to -111.6% in 2025 on utilization of about 35% for hybrid solid-liquid cells, with cumulative net losses exceeding 3 billion yuan over three years. SMM forecasts global all-solid-state shipments will only exceed 10 GWh by 2030 and approach 1,000 GWh by 2035.
The 2026 IPO race and what triggered it
Regulators eased the path. The full registration system for "hard-tech" enterprises tightened late in 2025, and Hong Kong Exchange Chapter 18C lowered the market cap threshold for Specialty Technology Companies from 8 billion to 6 billion Hong Kong dollars. Together those changes let more solid-state firms list before they reach scale. ProLogium announced a SPAC merger with TDAC in May 2026 at a valuation near 3.8 billion dollars, targeting Nasdaq under ticker "PRLG" in the second half of the year.
Backers are buying supply, not just stories
WeLion's shareholder list reads like a supply chain map. NIO Capital, Xiaomi Changjiang Industry Fund, Huawei Hubble Investment, Geely Holding, Tianqi Lithium, Huayou Cobalt and Enjie all hold stakes. Tianqi supplies lithium and Enjie supplies electrolyte membranes, so their participation signals locked-in future offtake rather than passive financial exposure. That vertical integration is a hedge against the fact that all-solid-state cells have not reached mass production.
The secondary market already picked favorites
QuantumScape traded near 3.3 to 3.4 billion dollars as of June 30, 2026, while Solid Power sat at about 465 million. The spread reflects a judgment about technical routes, not company management alone. Sulfide electrolyte cells carry higher ionic conductivity but poor air stability, while lithium-metal anode cells attract investors who believe next-generation energy density needs favor that route. Gotion High-Tech has a 2 GWh all-solid-state production line designed, and BYD, EVE Energy and Sunwoda are building capabilities without listing a dedicated battery unit.
Industry reality check: who ships what and when
ProLogium's Dunkirk plant in France planned 48 GWh of annual capacity but ran below 5 GWh through 2026, a utilization rate around 10%. The company holds more than 1,100 global patents and secured roughly 1.4 billion euros in French subsidies, yet the plant still runs far below plan. Chunli New Energy started production at a 1 GWh solid-state facility in Jiangxi on September 29, 2026, and signed multiple GWh-level storage deals at its launch summit.
What the money cannot fix quickly
Sulfide routes dominate technical filings, and air stability of sulfide electrolytes remains a common challenge that raises handling cost. Toyota pushed all-solid-state mass production from 2027 to 2030, which confirms the difficulty even for firms with deep budgets. SMM's consensus places all-solid-state mass production at 2028 to 2030, with hybrid solid-liquid treated as the transitional route.
What to watch next
Three filings will settle the race: WeLion's ChiNext submission through its Beijing CSRC bureau queue, QingTao's Hong Kong board decision following its April 8 application, and ProLogium's second-half SPAC close. Whether any of them can ship at scale before 2030 is less certain than the valuations suggest. The real signal will be utilization rates, not listing prices.
The hardware bottleneck in detail
Moving from pouch cells to gigafactory output exposes three problems that money alone cannot close. First, sulfide electrolytes react with moisture in air, so production lines need dry rooms with dew points below minus 40 degrees Celsius, which raises both capital and operating cost per gigawatt-hour. Second, the thin solid electrolyte layer, often under 20 micrometers, tears during winding and stacking, and scrap rates on early lines reportedly run above 30 percent. Third, lithium-metal anodes swell and contract during cycling, which strains cell housing and compresses cycle life predictions into guesswork until real-world fleet data arrives.
QingTao's -111.6% gross margin is the clearest illustration of the second and third problems combined with low utilization. At 35% utilization, fixed depreciation on a 2 GWh line spreads across fewer cells than the model assumed, and replacement of defective batches eats the rest. Factorial Energy's June 2026 listing at a combined 1.3 billion dollars gives investors a publicly traded US-domiciled comparable, but its revenue base remains pre-commercial and dependent on automaker development agreements.
Policy tailwinds across three markets
South Korea's government announced priority support for sodium-ion and solid-state batteries on October 13, 2026, pairing grants with domestic materials targets. China already did its part by easing hard-tech IPO registration late in 2025 and by allowing Chapter 18C listings at lower market caps in Hong Kong. The European Union is subsidizing ProLogium's Dunkirk site with roughly 1.4 billion euros precisely because Brussels wants at least one solid-state champion on the continent. Three jurisdictions, three different levers, and none of them solve the scrap rate problem.
It's not clear this will hold. Capital can fund lines but cannot compress the years of cycle testing that automakers demand before signing offtake. If one of WeLion, QingTao or ProLogium lists successfully in 2026 and ships above 5 GWh within two years, the sector's valuation arithmetic changes. Until then the race is really a contest to see who bleeds least cash while waiting for the process to mature.
Outlook
SMM puts hybrid solid-liquid shipments above 200 GWh by 2030 and nearly 1,500 GWh by 2035. If even a fraction of that moves to all-solid-state, the upside is large, but the cost curve has to fall first.
For a detailed breakdown of route comparisons, see SMM analysis. Browse more battery coverage at desk coverage.